


A love like war

by brokenbeauty



Series: Don't Panic [2]
Category: Free!
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 07:46:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13430172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenbeauty/pseuds/brokenbeauty
Summary: "What does this change?"





	A love like war

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY I'M SO SORRY THIS HAS BEEN PENDING FOR A LONG TIME-- it's rinrin's bday present, fourth year writing for him now ayayayaya
> 
> now it's turned into a 10k sex monster with hella exposition
> 
> i hope you like it lol

_Make a wish on a sorry little heart_ _, have a smoke, pour a drink, steal a kiss in the dark_

The slam—or maybe it’s a quiet click of the door, but it sounds deafening in the still night air as he kicks it shut behind himself. He holds his breath, afraid, almost, that the sound—any sound—other than their labored breathing will shatter this illusion that he has dreamed up. That anything real will drive a stake right through the flickering mirage of Haruka’s face so close to his own.

Maybe he’s drunk. Yeah, maybe Mikoshiba spiked his energy drink and now the alcohol in his system is probing at all the one million hopes and dreams and fears and desires that have congealed along the edges of  his heart like scum, stirring them around and bringing them rushing to the forefront. Even as he tries in vain to push them away, to not aspire to something he can never have, never even dare to wish for. 

And yet. And yet the shape of Haruka is solid in his arms, warm and tangible and  _there._ And somewhere inside him, he knows that no drunken hallucination can compare. 

So, here and now in the dark where it is safe, where he operates on spatial concepts, on intuition rather than sight, here he dares. Mutes the tremble of his fingers where they’re suddenly pressing indents into either side of Haruka’s face. And he brushes their lips together.

Because here and now in the dark, he has time. Where he can’t see the limpid blue of Haruka’s eyes spelling out questions he has no answer to, he can afford to cast the urgency aside and do their first kiss all over again.

And so their lips brush once, twice more before coming to press against each other while Rin marvels at the forms perfection can take.

_Fingernails on the skin like the teeth of a shark, I’m intoxicated by the lie_

It’s almost embarrassing, really, how fast his heart is beating in reaction to every minute shift in Rin’s grip on his waist, at the chaste press of their lips. His parents had always told him that physical contact was powerful, and for all his aversion to it, he now understands completely. Because Rin is an inferno, and he, made of kindling, wants to rush headlong into it. 

So he slides the hands at Rin’s back up into his hair. Opens his mouth to bite at Rin’s lower lip and muffles his subsequent gasp into an open-mouthed kiss. Tightens the hands in his hair just to feel tension flood into Rin’s hold on his waist, the sting as he digs his nails in. 

And something must have sparked in Rin then, because he’s crowding Haruka up against the wall now, and he barely has time to wince at the switch digging into his back before Rin’s mouth is on his own and all the breath is being stolen right out of his lungs. Or maybe it’s just  _Rin_ _,_ the proximity to him that’s making his head cloud. He’s letting himself be pushed further and further up the wall, letting Rin support his weight because he can’t seem to do it himself, wrapping his legs around his waist.

They both freeze when light floods the room, heartbeats stuttering in tandem before Haruka realizes.

“…Switch,” his voice is hoarse when he mutters. Rin just looks at him questioningly, so he clarifies. “I’m up against the switch.”

But Rin’s gaze lingers on him long after he’s hummed in affirmation, and he grows uncomfortable. He probably looks a mess, what with his mussed hair and cheeks as crimson as the gaze fixed relentlessly on him.

But Rin won’t stop  _looking._

“What,” he finally asks, averting his eyes from Rin’s face, from that brilliant intensity of focus. And he finds himself thinking—half-formed thoughts he’s always had solidifying into one—that Rin is beautiful. Too beautiful. 

So bright he’ll burn out.

“You’re beautiful, Haru.” 

It catches him by surprise, that breathless, reverent exhale, which resonates somewhere deep within him. And he wants to tell Rin to turn around and take a good long look in the mirror before saying that again. Because no one else has waltzed into his life and claimed a corner of his mind for his own. No one else has he drawn and redrawn, again and again trying and failing to capture even a figment of the blinding, beautiful energy he wears as easily and as carelessly as an article of clothing. No one else has made him want to tell people to look in the lane next to him—a lane permanently reserved for Rin—when they called his own swimming beautiful.

A thousand thoughts of the essence clamor at his lips, and he doesn’t know what to think of them, let alone begin to put them into the inadequacy of words. And then Rin speaks again and lays them all to ruin.

“I love you.” 

For a moment, he doesn’t process it. And when he does, his body flashes hot—hotter than it already is. His throat dries, and even as Rin leans in to join their mouths again, he’s trying to calm down the wild snatches of his breath. Because it isn’t true, it can’t be—not with his virulence at the swim club that night, not with his open hatred ever since. But there’s a part of him that wants to tear right out of his chest with the violent beat of his heart, wants to prise open his throat and force him to reply in kind.

But now Rin’s lips are on his again, swallowing the words he hasn’t said, stealing the air from his lungs and the thoughts from his head, and Haruka is as grateful as he is indignant. He feels drunk, dizzy and disoriented with Rin’s hands up under his shirt, Rin’s scent crawling into the back of his nose, the pores of his skin. Settling in and tingeing his world moods of chlorine and cinnamon like it had always belonged there. 

_In the chill of your stare I am painfully lost, like a deer in the lights of an oncoming bus_

He could stay like this forever. 

It’s not so much a thought as a feeling, born out of irony and the warmth of Haruka’s skin under his touch. It’s the way their skin seems to amalgamate at every point of contact, much loath to separate, and the way Haruka’s mouth seems to chase his when he pulls back to breathe. So much so that he’s almost afraid to open his eyes even as the light beats down on his eyelids with every ragged inhale.

He’s afraid of Haruka, he belatedly realizes when there’s nothing to distract from their proximity, from his roiling thoughts except for their mingling breaths and the rise and fall of their bodies. He’s afraid of impassivity. He’s afraid that Haruka’s gaze will read contradictory to what his body spells out, leaving him once again overwhelmed and dissatisfied all at once. 

And more than anything, he’s afraid of rebuke, of disgust. Of unrequitedness.

But he can sense the weight of those eyes on him, and he can only run for so long. And so he gives in to the light, lets his eyes open. And meets Haruka’s stare dead on. 

Not a word passes between them even as Rin scrutinizes Haruka’ face for any giveaway of the turbulence which rages in his own chest—the evidence of which is spelled out all too plain, he knows, across his features. But he can’t read Haruka like Makoto can. And for a moment, he feels irrationally, wildly jealous of him. Thinks he’d have given it all up for the key to Haruka’s moods, the meaning of each dip and lilt and inflection in his voice, instead of having to grasp at any little thing he could find—the faint flush of his cheeks, the little hitches in his breath—to try and decode him like some complex hieroglyph. With the beauty of it lost in translation. 

And as his limbic system cools down—yes, he paid attention in eighth grade biology—he registers a hitherto unnoticed sound. 

“What’s that noise?”

It’s a bad attempt at diffusing the tension, what with the way his voice comes out hoarse and cracking, but Haruka—praise be to god—indulges it. His brow furrows for a moment.

“Oh. The water.”

“You ran a bath? At this hour?” 

Rin isn’t even surprised. At the situation, at Haruka’s blasé response. He only follows him as he disentangles himself from their embrace and heads in the direction of the bathroom, trying not to be bitter about the fact that Haruka’s eyes had lit up in a way they never had with him when talking about a goddamned bath.

_For the thrill of your touch I will shamefully lust as you tell me we’re nothing but trouble_

He’s thankful for the diversion like he’s never been thankful for anything else in his life. It’s something to distract his mind from the crimson smog that is threatening to choke every last bit of his logical thinking, leaving him to bare himself utterly to its perpetrator. He’s afraid that he’s already done too much, shown too much of himself to Rin, in everything physical that happened and after. With nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, he’d been painfully aware of the openness of his face, the vulnerability of his eyes. Scared that Rin could read it off his gaze, how much he cared. How much he wanted.

And despite it all, the unsurety marring Rin’s features. Like even after everything that had happened—or maybe because of it—he still couldn’t see Haruka as anything but someone who had spirited away his golden dream, as an obstacle between himself and his ultimate goal.

As he’s walking to the bathroom, he’s conscious—how can he not be?—of Rin following. And he almost wishes that he wouldn’t, would let himself and the chaos he heralds whenever he barges into Haruka’s life quietly out the door, like nothing ever happened.

Almost.

Because he could have, at any given point during this—whatever  _this_ is— turned around and asked Rin to leave. He knows that. 

But what he couldn’t have done, in its wake, was erase the map Rin’s hands had spanned out across his skin, discard from himself like a used garment all of the myriad emotion that seemed to overwhelm him in any situation Rin was party to. Unlearn the way the taut muscles of Rin’s back quivered beneath his hands, the way Rin’s sharp teeth grazed along his tongue, the sting, the thrill of it all, and he knows that, too.

All too well.

So he says nothing, diverting his attention instead to slowing his heartbeat, the quickening of his pulse, trying to gather his composure before he has to turn around and watch it all unravel again. 

The ten steps from the genkan to the bathroom feel interminably long, feet dragging, he supposes, in some perverse, masochistic attempt to draw this out. He has only begun to remember to be irritated with his subconscious for the betrayal before he opens the bathroom door and is distracted by the fog of steam obscuring everything.

And suddenly, his skin prickles as all his hair stands on end. Maybe it’s the seclusion of the confined room, maybe it’s the steam obscuring much of his vision, but he’s suddenly hyperaware—not of Rin’s presence, that’s a given—but of the fact that Rin could pin him up against any of these walls and shatter the boundary they had only skirted outside.

And that Haruka would let him. 

Want him to.

He belatedly registers the cascade of bathwater as it overflows from the tub, the water pooling around their ankles—the actual reason that had brought them here. He hurries to the tap, turns off the flow. And immediately regrets doing it. Because the few seconds the maneuver has bought him come at the price of muting the hum of background music, leaving silence to stretch like a yawning abyss between them. Almost like it has warped itself into some tangible entity with hands and teeth and dug itself a nest somewhere in the inner reaches of his heart. Even as its touch shivers down the knobs of his spine, making him tense even further. 

He knows that if he turns around now, Rin will decipher every last one of his emotions and fears and desires written plain as day across his face. If the air in the room was a sound, it would be excruciatingly high-pitched, a rubber band poised to snap with all the anticipation lacing it. He can taste it on his tongue, refusing to let his body cool down, more potent than any aphrodisiac.

And he cannot turn around. So he takes the only other option he has.

Even keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the bathtub doesn’t keep him from hearing Rin’s sharp inhale when he reaches for the hem of his shirt, pulling it off in one fluid motion. Then the pants and underwear. And before his skin has time to flush more, he steps into the bath.

In retrospect, he should have considered the fact that it was a  _hot_ bath. Because the heat of it goes straight to his head, straight down between his legs, and he’s hard-pressed to contain the gasp that strains against the confines of his throat as every filthy fantasy he’s ever entertained about Rin comes rushing back in one tidal wave.

And then, with complete loss of reason, comes blankness. Blankness as he turns his head to look directly at Rin’s frozen figure across the room, hazed over by the dissipating steam. And blankness as his lips form words and his throat lends them voice.

“Aren’t you coming in?”

_Hearts on fire tonight, feel my bones ignite_

For a moment, Rin feels like he’s hearing things. To do  _that_  with Haruka—to have the privilege—was something he’s never let himself consider, even. And yet here they are, with the lazy turn of Haruka’s head, his half-lidded eyes all exuding a draw he’s all but helpless against. He lets a moment, two, slip by just taking it in, afraid his legs will give out and shatter this half-dream as soon as he takes a step. 

But reality will not wait for him, already seeming to slip away with the last lingering trace of the steam veiling it. And Rin will be damned if he lets it. So he swallows, once, and takes the first few hesitant steps. They soon give way to something more confident, quicker, as the urgency that had possessed him when he’d pressed Haruka up against the wall and laid out his imperious demands for answers across his body, returns. And suddenly he can’t get across the room fast enough.

He barely hears the muffled thump his clothes make against the floor when he sheds them, too enthralled by the tableau in front of him. Haruka in the tub, the heat of the water making his pale skin glow pink while the steam twines around him like a veil. Eyes murky with something unspoken, making a rush of saliva flood Rin’s mouth. He wants, he finds himself thinking, to run his tongue over every inch of that deliciously fragile body, leave his marks on it like a painting of purple-blue which wells with blood and defies any attempt at erasure. But more than any of that, he wants to cradle that face, that stubborn, bewitching set of features, with his fingertips and kiss it like it’s something precious.

When he finally lifts his eyes to meet Haruka’s, he realizes that they’re looking over him as unabashedly as he’d been doing, and Rin is instantly thankful for every additional hour he’s put in at the gym. All the same, the scrutiny makes him uncomfortable. Nudity is no big deal for him—it’s an occupational hazard—but the intimacy of this setting, and in no large part the unflinching eyes of the voyeur, make him acutely aware of the hardness between his legs, the flush creeping down his neck. So he ends it by leaning down, tracing one reverent finger down over the soft skin of Haruka’s cheek, unblemished except for the red blotched across it.

And it’s like that one little touch opens the floodgates, with the give of the skin hinting at  _more_ and suffusing Rin with that deep, visceral— _hunger,_ for the lack of a better word— that always seems to rear its head when their bodies are in contact. And it’s too much, somehow—the fact that it’s not enough. Like he’s drowning and his only salvation lies in delving deeper. 

He experiences what happens next in flashes, his hand cupping Haruka’s chin, the murky darkness that accompanies the sensation of Haruka’s lips on his own, the taste of his tongue, the weight of arms locked around his neck. And his marionette strings seem to be firmly in the grasp of those imperious blue eyes, irrecoverable from their depths. Maybe they always had been, but he feels the tug only when Haruka’s head tilts back, breaking from the kiss, and his own follows as if on a leash. His hands brace against the sides of the tub, caging Haruka in their midst as they both catch their breaths. 

For a moment, there’s a rush of elation that flashes quick and sharp like citrus across his tongue, like closing his hand around a bird of flight. But Haruka only has to look at him, eyes limpid with something dangerously akin to vulnerability, and the feeling of conquest dissipates like grains of chaff in a headwind. 

“Aren’t you coming in?” 

Fuck.

If Rin had had any trouble deciphering the meaning in his gaze, that voice—soft, halting,  _scared_  almost—left him without a shadow of doubt. He threw his head back and exhaled a sigh which was half a laugh.

“Jesus, Haru.” 

And really,  _Jesus,_ _Rin_ too. Because what had he been thinking, elated at believing he’d forced Haruka into a corner? What had he been  _thinking,_ when somewhere he knew that however much their relationship defied all laws of reason, it followed Newton’s third law of motion to the letter? Every action had an equal and opposite reaction— trying to exorcise the ghosts of Haruka’s voice, he’d been haunted by them every waking moment. Trying to hate Haruka, his real feelings lay bare to everyone but himself. And trying to corner Haruka, he’s found that he’s the one staring down the propensity of the choice.

Choice. It was a funny way to put it, considering that he had none. Whether he stayed or left was immaterial to the fact that their relationship had changed irrevocably. And even discounting the fact that he—or Haruka, for that matter—would never be able to forget, even without the heat clawing at his insides which could only find satiety in Haruka’s touch, he’s always known what he’ll do.

“You’ll be the death of me.” 

Because he’s done with trying to forget.

_Feels like war, war_

Although he’d wanted it, asked for it, even tentatively begun to expect it, Rin lowering himself into the bathtub still comes as a shock to him. For a split second, his old instincts rise up in his throat like bile, averse to close proximity, and he flinches. But then Rin’s solid weight comes to rest atop him and all thought, all conditioning, all preconceptions leave his head in one choked gasp.

It’s an awkward, cramped position in his small bathtub, with Rin essentially on his lap, and it takes some maneuvering for him to accommodate his legs in the space around Haruka. But then, somehow, it all just seems to fit and their bodies are flush against each other, and the heat of the water around them, so cloying at first, pales in comparison to that of Rin’s. Or maybe it’s his own. He can’t tell anymore, can’t find it in himself to care, either, because Rin’s arms are closing him in, Rin’s mouth is claiming his with the fervor of a starving man, and Haruka is responding, tooth and nail, as all his senses are invaded.

 When Rin’s hands wander from around his neck to toy with his nipples, he is hard-pressed to contain the embarrassing noise that forms in his throat. Rin, though, knows—he always does—and Haruka can feel him smirk into the kiss as he does it again. This time, Haruka can’t stop his hips from bucking up to rut against Rin’s. And that delicious friction, the noise it pulls from Rin’s throat, almost make it worth his discomfiture at that unguarded action.

Rin breaks the kiss, then, and there’s naked desire in his eyes, in the set of his mouth, when he looks Haruka over—and Haruka knows that his own expression is a pretty perfect mirror in that respect. He gets a split second to consider that before Rin’s hand closes around both their cocks and his head is flying back at the touch on his hypersensitive flesh. He’d been aware—more than aware—of the ache between his legs, of Rin’s hardness pressed against it, but the direct stimulus sends a shockwave through him. And somewhere he knows that the touch of his own hand will never again compare to Rin’s callused palm.

And now Rin’s hand is moving in quick, rough strokes over the both of them and nothing else registers. He thinks he’s moaning, that his mouth is forming around nonsensical monosyllables, but he can’t be sure, because all he can hear is his blood pounding in his ears in synchronicity with his climbing heartbeat. All he knows is that he needs Rin to keep doing what he’s doing until they both reach completion, and then do it some more.

He only vaguely realizes that if he could gather the faculties to be afraid right now, he would be. 

_We go together or we don’t go down at all_

He thinks that the material equivalent of what they’re doing is reading an extensive list of why they shouldn’t, then crumpling it up and tossing it into the trash. Because all the consequences to this that he knows have slipped past the grip of his recall, relegated themselves to the far reaches of his thought process. The intangible eclipsed by the physical, the feverish heat of Haruka’s body at every point of contact, the fullness of his cock where he’s stroking the both of them, the little keens he makes every time Rin twists his wrist just so. It makes his blood run hotter and his jaw clench with the effort to hold back from throwing Haruka down on the bathroom floor and making an utter mess of him.

Much as he would have liked to let his eyes flutter shut, let his instincts take over and guide the both of them to orgasm like this, he grits his teeth against the overwhelming temptation. He wants more from this. He wants a sanctum. And more than anything, he wants to show Haruka a sight he’s never seen before.

So he kisses him again, all bite, in a vain attempt to allay the heat coiling in his belly before he lets go of their cocks, Haruka’s dissatisfied whimper making him regret it just a little.

“Turn over, Haru.”

He’s almost surprised at how throaty his voice sounds, how urgent, when he gives the instruction. At how shaky his legs are when he shifts to give Haruka space to move. And he’s extremely thankful that he’d adjusted his position while Haruka had been bracing his arms against the edge of the tub. The bottom of the tub is unforgiving on his knees, but it’s a small price to pay for saving himself the embarrassment of his legs giving out when confronted with the pale, smooth expanse of Haruka’s back, the subtle hint of toned muscle flexing just beneath the thin skin when he moves, curving out gracefully into a shapely ass.

Rin’s fingertips itch with the need to touch, and, still only half believing that he can now indulge that fancy, he runs them down his body almost tentatively. And then again with more intent, the muted trembles he feels running under his fingers lending them steadiness and purpose.

When Rin’s fingers brush against the dips at the bottom of his spine, Haruka gasps. And somewhere, just that little affirmation that this heat razing his logical thinking, this desire to own and be owned, doesn’t thrum through his veins alone, makes him wince even as something trickles slow and hot through his veins. And he’s suddenly afraid—afraid, paradoxically, of that undercurrent of surety which holds a mirror up to everything their relationship really is, and fades away when Rin tries to tie it down. It’s pure instinct—everything that their relationship is right down to the hailstorm phone call that landed him here—and it's an incandescent premise at best and flimsy at worst. It reminds him, almost painfully, of that other Rin, the one who'd throw his heat as no more than bait and wait until it was thrown back at him, bloodied and barely beating.

And then there was Haruka, when the broken pieces stabbed him clean through.

His fingers are unsteady now, trembling violently as he tries to press them in deeper to Haruka's back to calm them, and he's sure he can feel Rin tremble in tandem with his own body. But try as he might, he can't,  _can't_ think of anything to say to dispel the awkward tension that feels like the smothering heat of under a kotatsu.

"Rin."

Rin's pretty sure Haruka's said this before, that simple syllable, without inflection, without emotion. But the effect is instantaneous. The doubt he's pulling tight around himself like a shroud is wrenched from his grasping hands, and the rush of—something that feels wistful and familiar and nostalgic all at once, like the last hurtle towards the finish, spreads like an ink spill. Obliterating the insecurities he's been clinging to like a lost child. 

Because for all their incongruences, for all the jagged edges that don't quite fit—that are sharp enough to cut himself on if he dares venture too close, for all the half-conversations and unbroken silences, he's got a million times when it hasn't mattered. When he hasn't known. When he's swallowed his terror to float on the high of instinct, and he hasn't crashed and burned. 

Because what he  _does_ know is that the way Haruka says his name will never change.

And neither will the way it makes him feel. 

So he steels himself. Takes a deep breath, and— _maybe—_ wonders for a split second if Haruka isn't in as deep as he is.

It's no surprise to him that his fingers have finally stopped trembling. 

_Fail-safe trigger, lockdown call, wipe dry-clean slate, quick, sound the alarm_

It had been just one word. 

Haruka had never been good at finding things to say— something which people often misinterpreted as broodiness—but it was just that. He couldn't make people laugh, or comfort them, or be there for them in any real sense of the word. It was just easier to stay silent than grasp for words like trying to contain flowing water in his inadequate hands. 

But Rin.

With Rin—it was like his filter just ceased to exist. He usually let things flow—and he had.

But it's overwhelming that something someone like Haruka said could do that to him. And yeah, the respite Haruka had expected from being turned over and not having to look at Rin never comes, because devoid of the stimulus of Rin's little expressions, there's nothing to distract him from the uncomfortable thought. 

Of that, and of the sensation of Rin's fingers slowly, assiduously creeping their trail of fire lower, and Haruka is suddenly reminded again of how  _hot_ it is. The heat of their bodies, the heat of the water, all slowly amalgaming into viscous, clear-eyed insanity. And suddenly Rin's hands are too slow. Slow enough to drive what's left of Haruka's sanity spiraling down the drain with the excess bathwater. And before he knows it, he's made an aborted thrust into Rin's touch.

And somehow it's not panic when he  _hears_ Rin gritting his teeth, the  _alright, Haru_ before the hands are gone and there's silence for a moment before he hears the click of the bottle—one of his essential oils, he supposes—when he feels the tell-tale ripple of Rin settling back into his position. It's just—for the lack of a better term, want. Something has convinced Haruka that this is happening in a vacuum— because only in it can something as ethereal as constellations traverse the light years to touch without the crash and burn. 

And since the manacles of consequence have been lifted—maybe Haruka can be a little bit honest.

"Come on, Rin," he breathes, half into the still bathwater where it makes the ghost of a ripple before settling. And then,  _then_ his words hang in the air, as ethereal and nothing as the split second before the pain of a slap, before the disintegration of a flickering ember. 

And then it crashes down on him with his stifled gasp as Rin's finger breaches his entrance. It's nothing, should be nothing, but each movement that digit makes is hypermagnified, and his breath escapes the cage of his lungs in short, exacting gasps as it pushes deeper. And maybe Rin knows, Rin  _knows_  some of what is going through Haruka's head in a dizzying mass too fast for him to comprehend, because he doesn't—as is his wont—doesn't fumble, doesn't ask. Just presses in a second finger, only tensing a little at Haruka's gasp. But the alarms in Haruka's head have rung and rung themselves out and dry, with no one to heed, and now it's sterile, sterile and—eroding into crimson, carmine, red. And there's nothing to stop the sighs on every hitched breath that make Rin answer in kind, when he scissors his fingers. 

"Ah—," the whimper leaves Haruka unbidden when his back is suddenly blanketed in a heavy weight, when there's a sharp sting at the side of his neck quickly laved over with a tongue. And he's not sure if it's Rin's sudden, unbearable proximity, his teeth having their vicious way with the fallow of his neck, or the way the movement pushes his fingers in  _deep,_ that makes him cry out like that. 

But the reasoning algorithm of it is quickly fading further and further into his distant recall, trace obliterated by the way it seems to set something off in Rin, the delicious way his fingers dig into the side of his jaw, to pull him into a messy kiss. It's all their mismatched edges clashing together, it's teeth and tongue and—it's everything Haruka ever wanted from Rin.

And if—if a single honest sound can inspire this, then, well...

But now Haruka's vision is blurring, he's panting for the air Rin will not allow him—the air he's not certain he wants either, because now Rin's fingers are moving, and his mouth is chasing Rin's like the withdrawal of air will resuscitate him. 

That is, until, Rin curls his fingers, and then he's not sure anything can bring him back to the realm of sanity as his mouth detaches, pulls back, opens of its own accord, and it's a while before he realizes that the keen which resounds off the walls is his own. 

Rin's other hand, the one not wreaking havoc on his sanity, grabs at his side, hard enough to bruise, hard enough to hurt, and when Haruka flinches, turns to meet his eyes, they're staring right at him with the kind of hot, open lust which makes him shake.

His hold doesn't relax even when Haruka squirms, involuntarily pushing his fingers up against that spot, making him screw his eyes shut as a moan is pushed out of him.

"Look at me, Haru." 

And there's something in his voice, layered just underneath the command of it, that tugs something sharp against his strung-out, racing heart, that forces his eyes open, but in response to something other than Rin's imperative. 

"Do you want this?" It's a question, but Rin urgency makes it into a plea—the kind of validation Rin's always needed. "Do you really want this, Haru?" 

And Haruka is suddenly annoyed, because what does Rin  _think_ if Haruka has allowed him to sweep him up in his tangled mess of a tornado, to raze all his barriers to the ground in his wildfire? What does he think if he already has some sort of uncomfortable home in Haruka's chest and Haruka has  _allowed_ it—all the while feeling like he's lodged a ticking timebomb in the space between his heart and lungs and it's somehow fine? What does he think if Haruka hadn't slammed the door as soon as he saw him ushering in his million possibilities with it? 

And what does he think, in that Haruka never really had any choice in the matter? 

All of this, and then some more—it's all there, advancing like a tidal wave to the forefront of his mind, and he fights to let his vision focus from the heat thrumming through his body. But when it does, when he sees Rin's gaze so open and swirling in that insecurity he gathers up and uses like ammunition, the one he's only seen so up close and personal that day two years ago, he can't find the words. They slip away like sand from a clenched fist, like time from his grasping fingers.

He looks away.

_No escape from the truth and the weight of it all, I am caught in the web of a lie_

Haruka's lip trembles, and Rin wants to bite it, even as he wants to dig fingernail-tracks into the fine-boned jaw and coax it up towards himself. 

Because even as Haruka's gaze had dropped from his own, even as his heart had sunk in tandem, he'd been struck by the stark parallel of sooty lashes against ivory skin—and there was no helping him. He's gone, he's so far gone for this boy with all his bizarre reactions—who'd let him into his house and into his body at some ungodly measure of the distance between them and yet refuse to acknowledge him in a nod of his head. And—and all Rin can think now is to laugh at his own absurdity for  _needing_ that validation in the first place. 

But what if. And it's all he wants to do, get inside Haruka's head for once and root all of those what-ifs out. 

It's tearing him two ways, his instinct—the lie of Haruka's turnaway and his need to follow it through, and the insecurity screaming at him to give up the stalemate, to walk away before he's crushed in the radio silence of their dissynchronicity. It's something that grows more imposing by the minute, the need to choose, more urgent—and more and more, every flight reaction he's honed in the bitterness of that winter day is coming to the fore, taking over himself—

And then Haruka makes another thrust back into his fingers and it all dissipates like the dregs of mist in bright sunshine. 

"Haru—," it comes out as a choked, guttural moan as he surges back, turns his face up into a bruising kiss, searching in that mute acquiescence for that strain of pure, clear truth that holds their whole relationship suspended on end, probing with his fingers for that spot which makes Haruka gasp out bubbles of it. 

And it's an equation grounded in infinity—it's like there's no end to what he wants from Haruka, from his sounds, so he moves his fingers faster, adds another when Haruka relaxes, building him up, up, up, to the extent where he's actively arching his back, pushing back into more—making his own neglected arousal throb with need. He ruts it against Haruka's thigh, then, bites at the juncture of his shoulder when the friction of it slipping against his cock makes him throw his head back. 

And god help him, he's going to hell for this, but it's all he can do to stifle the urge to just  _take_ when Haruka isn't being honest. 

But truth and lies, honesty and the lack thereof, they're all blurring into the delicious friction of their cocks rubbing together, and Rin honestly cannot find it in himself to care when Haruka's keens mount in pitch and volume when he pushes in with four fingers, curling them around the spot which is quickly putting rout to Haruka's coherence and Rin's sanity, spreading them as wide as they'll go. 

"Ngh,  _no,_ Rin—!" 

Haruka's voice, as it always had, always will, sends a jolt of that same electricity through him, and he breathes hot into the back of his neck, lips curling into a smirk. 

"Yeah?" 

It's a nonsensical question, but coupled with a repetition of his movements into Haruka's prostate, it has the effect of pulling a long, low moan from him. And when he bucks his hips back this time, it stokes the flames razing Rin's restraint to dizzying heights, the rutting tightening the warning coil in his stomach dangerously. And he can't, anymore. 

He pulls his fingers out.

And despite the heat doing things to his reason, despite the situation—despite  _everything,_ this is one answer he needs to hear in clear-eyed sanity. Because this, Rin knows, this will have the power to change everything. This isn't something, as so often before, he can do  _to_ Haruka. This is something he needs to do  _with_ him.

And if it's something of this propensity, it can't be built on a lie. 

And it can't be just his heart up on a silver platter anymore. 

"Can I, Haru?" 

He fights the urge to kiss up along the side of Haruka's neck as he waits, tracing the path of each tiny water droplet that rolls off his hair to ripple into the tub. It's a decision he'll have to make alone—and Rin will wait. However long it takes, he'll wait. It's sizing their whole relationship into balance, this excruciatingly long moment, dragging it up to mirror and seeing if it'll hold. 

And neither of them can run anymore.

It hits Rin, belatedly, almost, that even though he's staking his heart on this one, he'll be okay with whatever Haruka chooses—because even though it'll be crushed glass through his veins, even though it'll bloody him, break him, all he wants, in the end—

And then Haruka's ducked head is turning and they're eye-to-eye again, and there's no scope for misgiving anymore—those eyes are like nothing he's ever seen before, nothing he'll ever see again—even without Haruka craning his neck to kiss him, bracing himself on one hand to tangle the other in Rin's hair. That kiss—there's nothing chaste about it, and yet  _purely sexual_  doesn’t even begin to touch the very extremities of what it is. It’s home and it’s out of depth, it weighs him down with the same shackles it cuts clean through in a clear ring of metal to set him free. 

But most importantly, it’s an exchange. An  _honest_ exchange— and Rin might not know what it all means, couldn’t even begin to guess— it tells him that maybe, this time, bone-bare facts aren’t what matters, and what  _does,_ well— it’s left to his heated body and pounding heart to figure that out. 

Said pounding heart isn't even given a breather, a moment to blink away the tangles of the web Haruka has woven around him when they disengage—because Haruka chooses that moment to murmur against his lips. 

"Yes, Rin. Yes." 

_And the bitch of it a_ _ll is that I’m running from the_ _desire_ _of the_ _people to whom I belong_

_Yes._

He’s said those fateful words and they've left him stone-cold sober— so what does that change in the whole convoluted equation of their relationship? He's said them, in an answer to a Rin who was asking much more than the wording of the question would belie, bringing to him in a sickenink rush, yes,  _consequences_. So what does he expect—hearts and flowers? Some sort of...  _relationsip_ _?_ Something beyond that heady collision of electricity when they're breathless, neck-and-neck—in the pool, or in the bedroom?

All of this, before Rin leaves again? 

If there's life still in those deities his grandmother prayed to, power still, then he throws his hands up before them to  _tell_ him, just.

What, exactly will be different? 

And he suddenly wishes he could take those spur-of-the-moment words back, scrape them off the tongue of his leaping heart, drag them soaring forty thousand feet off the ground back into sordid reality. Because that's what he'll be left to deal with after  _Rin's_ taken what he wants, after  _Rin's_ flown, after he's left nothing but a ghost of his desire and the touch of his hands itching like a scab across Haruka's skin. 

And so, so he turns to tell him just that, but the motion of his head stops abruptly as an all-encompassing, searing burn radiates through his body.

_"_ _Ahhhhh_ _—!"_ The moan is forced out of him, almost, what with the stretch and the headiness of it pushing buttons in him he didn't even know existed. There's a hundred million reasons why they shouldn't do this—Haruka is sure he has it by heart and then again, but it's crumbling like ashes off a cigarette, spiraling downwards into inconsequentiality with the way Rin is mouthing down his neck, tracing fingernails over his arms, shoulders, waist. He's losing himself—trying to grab desperately onto a chafing rope of sanity with burnt, bruised, brittle fingers, but it's unraveling into a hundred million threads—now, especially, with Rin's hoarse whisper into his ear.

_I'm moving._

He wants to run from it, mouth poised to say that no, but all that comes out instead is a deep, throaty moan when Rin makes a tentative, shallow thrust, setting all his nerve endings alight. He can  _feel_ it—feel so much, Rin's heart thudding in his chest, his deep, shuddering breaths in his ear, and—that. The point of contact where they're joined, throbbing with a heat enough to melt all of his hundred million reasons to the ground, to an undecipherable mass. 

And he's  _tired._

He's tired of running from—this, from Rin. Because it's not about him leaving, the realization is creeping like chilling water over Haruka. It had never been  _what if Rin leaves?_

_It's_

_What if Rin comes back?_

_And what if Rin stays?_

It's an uncomfortable epiphany—that he'd been fighting against a foregone conclusion most of his life, because Rin, Haruka—it had been stamped on them since the day Rin first asked him for a relay.

Since the sight he'd never seen before. 

He should've known, then, that it was only ever one person who could have made him feel that Molotov of frustration, exasperation, confusion—and something else entirely. Only one person who could have made him give up  _swimming._ One person who could fight him tooth and nail in the water and off it, and yet never make him feel like he'd lost. 

And that there was only ever Rin, for him. 

_If Rin stayed, what would_ _Haruka_ become?

But then Rin thrusts, again, with more power, and Haruka's entire body jolts, and he lets that thought sink down to the dregs of his conscious reserved for unwelcome intruders.

_At the end of the day you can tell me I'm wrong_ _'_ _cause_ _you went to all of this trouble._

It's so hot, it's stifling—and here Rin is,  _inside_ Haruka, somewhere he never thought he'd be with a break in the web of lies and pretense they've woven around themselves. It's so close he can't breathe, and he finds refuge in delving closer still, driving into Haruka this once, after a lifetime of waitinn and waking the wire, with everything he has. 

He's long since thrown the cost-benefit analyses of it into fanning the flames driving them both further still, but of the choked-off whimper Haruka makes, he can only think  _worth it._

And it's like that sound has broken the barricades of Rin's restraint, because he feels like it's otherworldly when he yanks Haruka to him, the rough of it digging bruises into the pale flesh of his waist and making them both gasp out. Like something sinister and fiery has possessed him when he snaps his hips without finesse, without caution. It feels like—he can't even describe, when he laps at the sweat-water beading in the hollows of his collarbones. 

Because they can lie all they fucking want—they can ignore each other's presence, but it's the law of nature, this bone-bare truth—that they will,  _will_ find themselves drawn inexorably to each other like opposing forces. 

It all just seems absurd to him now, more than anything else, as he stakes claim to Haruka's body with teeth on skin and brutal thrusts—why they went to so much effort. Each silence, each clipped remark, he lends voice to all of them now, moaning low in Haruka's ear— _you—_ ah _—_ _you're beautiful, Haru._ Each time that electricity crackles between them and he did nothing except ball his fists and make nearby walls his victims, he takes back now, angling his hips and  _thrusting._

_"_ _Ngh_ _,_ Rin—no, the water—inside—," 

And god fuck him, Haruka's sounds, the way he's barely coherent at this point,  _do_ something to his reason—as in, eradicate it completely. 

"Fuck, Haru—," 

He buries the end of that sentence in Haruka's hair, and the soothing fragrance of fresh cucumber and aloe crawls into the crevices of his mind and remains lodged there like a bad idea. It's foreign and it's—so, so much like scoming home. It's a while before he can tear himself away and sit back on his knees to give himself more momentum. 

And then he braces one hand on the back of Haruka's neck and begins to thrust in earnest. He has to close his eyes, then, because the sight of Haruka giving in to lust will have him coming far too soon and he knows it. And yet his reactions are the fuel that's burning Rin from the inside out—the noises he can't shut out, the wordless acknowledgement that he's  _right_ , that Haruka is as helpless to the draw of prophecy, to the intoxication of proximity as he himself is. And he feeds into that—maybe Haruka's words alone are shards of wicked-sharp ice, piercing him through and then through, sticking Rin's heart out on a spike for everyone to see—but he's only recently learnt that the heat hidden behind them is more than enough to cauterize them. 

And speaking of  _heat—_ Rin's vision is spotting red at the edges now, as he snaps his hips faster, faster, the pace blurring into  _too much_ even as every fiber of his being, in some juxtaposed entwinement, screams  _not enough._

It's ambrosia to him. And he's struck by a sudden resolve to make Haruka feel it, too—this sense of utter surrender, this crossing over beyond the point of no return.

And so, with trembling, slippery fingers, he wraps around Haruka's cock, jerking him off sloppily in some mismatched rhythm with his thrusts, drinking in every moan and breathless keen, how he tries to twist away from the stimulation despite himself.

_Mine,_ Rin can't even find it in himself to be alarmed at the intensity of the thought when he sucks the hickey into Haruka's neck,  _this is mine._

_Hearts on fire tonight, feel my bones ignite_

They're racing, racing, racing.

It's all Haruka can think— _think_ being a loose application of his thoughts which have started melting until nothing he sees, hears, feels, thinks is distinct. It's all just one big mess of pleasure, galvanizing his body again and again every with rough thrust Rin makes into him, every maddening movement of Rin's palm across his cock. It leaves him rubbed raw and smarting and with the only salient thought to push back and let the ride across the line of a chasing drug engulf him; reel back on marionette strings a shaking hand to curl into Rin's hair, flick his tongue across his bottom lip before  _biting._

"Ngh—!" Rin's hips jolt on one particularly brutal thrust, driving his cock in deep, straight into Haruka's prostate, and Haruka's teeth sink into his lip, hard, making Rin wince and Haruka jerk his head away. There's a moment of silence between them, then, Haruka watching in fascination as blood beads on Rin's lip, who seems too transfixed by something to bother wiping it away. It spots down his chin, then, tracing the cartilage of his throat, the sharp bones of his clavicle, before dripping down and merging into the water for a second of a bloody ripple and then—nothing. 

Stillness.

Haruka can swear he hears the cracks spiderweb across their cautions—a piece falling out, then two, three—and then—he doesn't know who reaches for who first, only that he now needs Rin's touch like he needs air to breathe, even more so—as the braces collapse with an almighty shatter. And through the dust, the destruction and the shrapnel, he only seeks Rin, Rin, Rin. 

Rin who has had begun to fuck him at a dizzying pace, uncaring that his movements send the heat of the water  _in_ _side_ him—he has a sneaking suspicion that it turns him on, even, when he protests. Rin who makes quick, practiced motions of his hand of Haruka's cock and coerces Haruka into suppressing all thoughts of him doing to himself. Rin who rakes his fingernails down his arm and murmurs filth in his ear, stealing his breath in kisses before he can tell him to shut up.

"Does it feel good, Haru?" he's murmuring now, punctuating it with a thrust, wickedly angled for his prostate so that when Haruka tries to tell him  _exactly_ where he can go shove his smugness, all that comes out is a half-whimper.

"I thought so," 

And really, who says Rin gets to have the upper hand?

So Haruka pushes back, clenches just when Rin is the deepest, and is rewarded with a moan that sends shivers down him.

"Haru," Rin growls in hoarse warning. "Don't push me." 

And that—that's the best goddamn idea he's ever heard. He shudders visibly, clenching tight, and turns back to look Rin dead in the eye. He knows how he must look right now, with hair wild and mussed and a deep flush running in his cheeks—and he also knows that every bit of it will work Rin up in beautful ways. 

So he looks back, failing to suppress another shudder at the clench of Rin's jaw, all the tendons in his arms straining with the effort of holding himself back and a pink stain running right down to his chest. And he says it. 

"Or what, Rin?"

_Feels like war, war_

_Or what, Rin?_

The words are echoing, maybe in his head, maybe in the smallness of the room, but it doesn’t matter—they're effective. Effective enough to destroy the last of Rin's tether to his higher faculties. He leave off on Haruka's cock to yank him up and back with a sure, if bruising, grip on his arm, and thrusts his hips up hard, dead-center. 

Haruka  _screams._

"Ahhh—ah, Rin—!" 

"You'll fucking forget to tease, Haru," Rin mutters into his ear, holding his body steady as it writhes in the face of the brutal pace he sets. "I'll make you forget everything except my— _nnh_ _—_ name."

His voice stutters as Haruka does that clenching thing around him that drives him absolutely insane—the fucking minx is still doing it on purpose. 

Well, two can play at that game. 

He suddenly pulls Haruka close, closer, turning his mouth to open it up under his, licking in with his tongue for that taste he'll never get enough of. Saliva drips down between them, and he trails the hand gripping Haruka's jaw down to pinch at his nipples, making him buckle against the stimulation, whimpering.

But Rin's not done. 

He keeps on the downward trail, replacing the hand around Haruka's cock, and jerking him off in sure, firm pulls. Haruka's body folds inwards, trying to escape the overstimulation even as Rin thrusts into him at that same punishing pace. It's getting more difficult for both of them to hold on, and Rin feels that same, dangerous  _(delicious)_ coil tightening in the pit of his stomach. And he's powerless to do anything about it anymore, burnt dry in the heat he can feel radiating off Haruka's skin. 

So he speeds up the pace of the hand on Haruka's cock, leans down to bite sucking kisses at the side of his neck, hard enough to make him shudder—and he has a sneaking suspicion it's largely with pleasure. When he turns Haruka's head, he's biting his lip hard enough to bleed, screwing his eyes shut, flushed cheeks wet. 

Rin has to physically close his eyes to stop from coming there and then.

"Let it out," he rasps into Haruka's ear. "I wanna hear it." 

He can't help but smirk at the stubborn, minute shake of head he gets in return. With a growl rumbling deep in his chest, he picks up the pace that had lagged while he'd marveled at the heart-stoppingly beautiful boy in front of him. His hand on Haruka's cock is all but a blur now, and sounds which seem snatched from Haruka's throat flow when he angles his hips right. 

But now Haruka's sounds are getting more frequent, higher and higher, and Rin doesn't let up, driving them both closer to the edge. It's beautiful, the screaming in his head and the frantic rush animating his limbs, and it's like he's chasing a point on the horizon burning in its intensity and yet so, so seductive in its embrace.

But he's got no time to ponder it over, because suddenly Haruka's little  _ah_ _ah_ _ahs_ are melding into a long, loud whimper, insides clenching vice-like around him as he comes his hot splatters over Rin's hand and into the bathwater, and Rin is  _gone._

The orgasm is like something rising up from the very core of him, shattering and forcing his eyes shut and making his toes curl as he moans into Haruka's ear. And while the rush leading up to it might be beautiful, invigorating, these few seconds of absolute white, the blankness where nothing at all matters, well.

They're the most beautiful of all. 

_We go together or we don't go down at all_

It's a while before Haruka realizes he's collapsed, and that the only things holding him up are Rin's shaking arms. As fast as he can in his hazy, uncoordinated state, he disentangles himself. He's much loath to move, what with the pleasant soreness in his hips and the tiredness settling into his bones, but the old alarm bells singing to the tune of  _get away get way get away_ have started up again, and suddenly he can't breathe in the closeness around them.

"...Towel."

It's all he can mutter out, averting his eyes from Rin's body as he hoists himself out of the tub, moving as fast as he can across the floor, slippery with the water that has splashed from the bathtub.

"Huh?" Rin's voice is gravelly, husky from sleepiness, and Haruka wishes he could just shut that sound out—before he finds himself back in the tub and staking claim to those lips even as they form around words. So he settled for the shortest, most clipped answer possible.

"I'll get us some towels." 

Rin's hum of acknowledgement is not lost on him, either, but he doesn't trust himself to respond, instead making a beeline for the door and the storage closet. Trying not to think about how the smell of fresh laundry had been exactly the same when he'd fetched bath towels for Rin after a sleepover all those years ago, or that he still used the same ones as back then. 

He pulls out two at random, tying one around his waist and, in the bathroom, handing one to Rin without a word. 

\------------------------

When they're both finished drying off, there's a long, awkward silence as they stand side by side in the tiny bathroom, towels around their waists. And then Rin voices the beginning of the conversation Haruka had been dreading ever since he got out of the tub. 

"So...," he begins. Maybe it's a prompt for Haruka, but he chooses to ignore it, instead staring right back at Rin, who sighs. "What does this make us, Haru?" 

And  _fuck_ Rin if he thinks that Haruka isn't groping in the dark for something more than  _feelings_ to tide them over as much as he is. 

"I don't know. You tell me, Rin. What does this even change?" 

Rin's eyes widen for a minute before he begins to glare. "Change? Of fucking course it changes things! You realize—,"

And Haruka is just as angry as him now, words, more words than he's ever spoken at a time just—breaking loose from years of confinement. "No,  _you_ realize, Rin, that it was just an act? An act that any two people can perform? What makes it special? That you fucking disappeared for years before it? I'm sorry, but that doesn't make up for when you should've been in touch. Or for that Rin who could just hurt others so callously."

_"_ You've hurt people, too, Haru," Rin murmurs almost under his breath, but before Haruka can open his mouth to refute, he shakes his head. "But that's not what matters now. The only thing that matters to me right now is that no one else can get me as confused, frustrated, god help me— _happy_ as you do. And there's no one who can say my name and make it mean something more than a common Japanese name—,"

"Stop—," 

A part of Haruka wants to press his hands to his ears, hear no more of this barrage of honesty which is poison to his defenses—even as he wants it to go on and on and on. A deep feeling of dread is settling in the pit of his stomach—one more word. One more word from Rin and he'll be lost. He'll stop caring that Rin'll leave, eventually. He'll stop counting the scars Rin's made. He'll forget the past, and he'll jump headlong. 

And then Rin presses on.

"And—shut up, Haru—and I never want to stop swimming with you."

And Haruka's head whips around to look at Rin—and for the first time he's seen since they were both idiot kids, Rin's eyes are transparent. Clouded with nothing, they're limpid with a thousand hopes and dreams and desires, the carmine dancing with golden flecks Haruka's never noticed in it.

It's terrifying.

"That me would never have run from Samezuka to Iwatobi just for a stupid boy," he says, mouth curling into a half-smile. "But I can't do this alone."

Rin is suddenly serious, taking Haruka's hands in his own and ignoring the flinch. "I need your heart too, Haru. It can't be just me." 

And Haruka looks into those eyes, fighting the urge to clutch at the floaty feeling inside his chest at the idea. Life without Rin had always been a compromise for him—somehow, somehow it's never been possible to reconcile himself completely to the idea of it. 

_And that's exactly the problem._

He clenches his eyes shut, looks away, fingernails digging into clenched fists. He can't,  _can't_ see the spart die from Rin's eyes. 

"Your past self was unreliable," he grits out, through teeth so tightly clenched his voice comes out muffled. "And so is this one." 

The silence that follows is interminable. Every second is a dart the embeds itself deep. He's clenching his eyes shut so hard they burn. And then—

"Okay, Haru."

There's the shuffling sound of Rin gathering his clothes, then, of him putting them on while his heart rends again and again with each fresh movement—knowing it's all on him makes it the stuff of nightmares. He wants to sink to the floor, knees suddenly too weak to hold him up, but he can't. Not yet.

And then there's that faint brush of wind, that faint crackle of electricity as Rin crosses him, the opening to the door—

Haruka's waiting for footsteps, but they never come. And only when he hears his name intoned in low, wondering syllables, does it hit him.

He's grabbed Rin's wrist.

His eyes flash open, and, for a moment he considers removing his hand. But then his gaze travels upwards—and, well, if he though Rin's eyes were limpid before—they're  _vibrant_ now. Brilliant with unshed tears and unspoken words, alight with requite. 

And for Haruka, forever isn't a house or a family or even swimming.

Forever is this. 

"Don't leave." That part of him completely steeped in crimson is forcing words upon him, and he'd fight them but for how true they are. "You always leave." 

Rin is across in a single stride, crushing Haruka to himself, joining their lips—not in a kiss, but in a promise. 

Because if Rin does leave—if, when—Haruka wants something to remember him by.

_I_ _s this_ _is_ _end of us, or just a means to start again?_

**Author's Note:**

> Lay it on me


End file.
